"As soon as I saw that on television that night, straight away I knew it was a cladding fire." Cladding supplier

It took the catastrophic Grenfell Tower fire in London, which claimed at least 80 lives, to set off alarm bells here, but as Four Corners will reveal, the danger posed by this cladding should not have come as a surprise.

"You can't tell me that if this product, by all reports, has been used widely in the industry for 10 to 30 years, that major suppliers ... didn't know where this product was going to end up." Fire officer

On Monday, Four Corners investigates why huge amounts of this aluminium cladding has been installed on so many of our buildings, and whether a desire to cut costs won out over caution.

"We have, if you will, a builder, a certifier and a fire engineer who are incentivized to reduce cost." Fire Engineer

Insiders say there has been a colossal failure of regulation and oversight.

"There's people out there that would have absolutely no idea what they're doing and they're installing it incorrectly, and they're the people we compete against every day." Builder

With access to the tests now under way on suspect aluminium cladding, we reveal the enormity of the problem facing authorities and ask who will pay to remove and replace it.

"Everyone has someone else to point the finger at. The product of deregulation and self accreditation, this process of abrogation of responsibility is that no one is responsible." Federal politician

Combustible, reported by Debbie Whitmont and presented by Sarah Ferguson, goes to air on Monday 4th September at 8.30pm. It is replayed on Tuesday 5th September at 10.00am and Wednesday 6th at 11pm. It can also be seen on ABC NEWS channel on Saturday at 8.10pm AEST, ABC iview and at abc.net.au/4corners.

Transcript

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SARAH FERGUSON: Hello and welcome to Four Corners.

A few months ago, flying into London early in the morning, I saw a huge column of smoke rising from a burning building way below us in the west of the city.

It was Grenfell Tower.

It was still burning hours after a small fire in one apartment leapt from floor to floor at terrifying speed, engulfing the entire structure.

Combustible aluminium cladding on the exterior walls was quickly identified as a major culprit.

The tragedy had echoes of a similar fire in Melbourne in 2014 that could also have ended in catastrophe.

After the disaster in London, 4 Corners began talking to fire fighters and safety experts about the dangers in similar buildings here.

Aluminium cladding has been used across Australia during the property boom.

As tonight's story reveals the building industry has known of the risks for years and regulators have failed to tackle it.

Debbie Whitmont investigates.

DEBBIE WHITMONT, REPORTER: It's the stuff of nightmares.

In June, as the world watched in horror, London's Grenfell Tower was devoured by flames.

At the height of the blaze, parts of the building rained down near firefighters and bystanders.

To many in the building industry - even here in Australia - it was clear straight away what was falling.

It was aluminium cladding that had been made with a highly flammable polyethylene or PE core.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Did you know what was on the building when you saw those pictures?

STEPHEN GEDDES, SUPPLIER: Absolutely, absolutely, it's PE.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Why did you think that?

STEPHEN GEDDES: Because of the way the flames spread and the way that the panels were falling off the wall.

Just because, with PE, it goes up the building and down the building.

The droplets spread the flame, and I knew exactly what it was absolutely, and anybody in the industry would know exactly what it was.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The fire began from an electrical fault in a fridge in a fourth-floor apartment.

The flames leapt out a window, caught the cladding outside, then raced around the building and up twenty floors - to the twenty fourth - within fifteen minutes.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: So, how combustible is this stuff?

TONY ENRIGHT, FIRE ENGINEER: A kilogram of polyethylene will release the same amount of energy as a kilogram of petrol, and it gets worse than that because polyethylene is denser than petrol too, so that's about, a kilogram of polyethylene is like about one and a bit, one and a half litres of petrol.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: And so, how many kilograms of polyethylene might there be on the side of a building?

TONY ENRIGHT: If you look at a one metre by one metre square section that will have about three kilograms, the equivalent of about five litres of petrol.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Grenfell Tower was a catastrophe polyethylene cladding, flammable insulation, poor maintenance, a lack of sprinklers and bad advice not to evacuate.

You sort of thought about what could have been at Lacrosse, but it's an absolute tragedy, just a waste of life really.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Two and a half years before the Grenfell fire, 450 people in a Melbourne high rise had a narrow escape.

The Lacrosse fire began just after two am on a Tuesday morning - in a redeveloped industrial area called Docklands.

Swim coach Peter Howes was asleep on the 16th floor.

PETER HOWES, LACROSSE RESIDENT: I woke up thinking my alarm was going off, that I had to work and I got up quickly, turned the lights on.

I looked up into the ceiling and I could see about 30 centimetres of smoke so it was my smoke alarm that was going off.

The fire started on an eighth-floor balcony.

000 EMERGENCY CALL: Emergency services, what is the address that you need the fire brigade to go to? The flat is um 805.

Yep.

And the address is 673 La Trobe Street.

In what suburb or town? It's Docklands.

The Docklands, 802/673 La Trobe Street, Docklands.

And It's just a fire um in the balcony, I don't know how it started.

Is it your apartment? It's really big though.

Is it your apartment? It's really, really big.

The fire brigade will be there soon, bye.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The first crews arrived within 5 minutes.

They were expecting a fire in one apartment.

They couldn't believe what they saw.

TIM ERIKSON: This was outside the building, it was burning on five or 10 floors.

This was completely outside of anything that we were prepared for or expecting.

There was actually a moment of absolute silence in the truck.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Tim Erikson was one of the first responders.

MFB RADIO COMMUNICATIONS: We have a fire in a multi storey apartment, multi-story building, the fire is on the third floor extending up to the 10th floor, going along the balconies, we have huge amount of smoke and fire on the buildings, we have multiple people inside the building.

TIM ERIKSON: Well the first thing that we needed to do was to look out for the people that were there and get them out of that building.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Fire fighters had to check more than 200 apartments.

BROOKING AND LAUREN STAPLETON, FORMER LACROSSE RESIDENTS:

Brooking: They banged on the door, actually.

Lauren: Twice.

Brooking: That's what kind of woke us up to, "wow, we better check this out".

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Brooking and Lauren Stapleton were on the third floor.

LAUREN STAPLETON: You could smell the smoke.

You knew there was a fire.

It was evident there was a fire, as well, and the firemen were, 'Come on guys, you've got to get down there quickly.'

TIM ERIKSON: It was burning really quickly and really fiercely.

I spent a couple of minutes outside at the front just marshalling the crews and getting them organised, but those couple of minutes I spent out the front you could see it spreading upwards.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Within minutes, the flames had reached the 21st floor, the top of the building.

Around 450 people were evacuated.

BROOKING STAPLETON: When we turned around and saw the fire up the side of the building, it was a bit shocking wasn't it? We couldn't believe it.

ADAM DALRYMPLE, ASSISTANT CHIEF FIRE OFFICER, METROPOLITAN FIRE BRIGADE: In our whole history of over 100 years, 125 years, and the way buildings are constructed, we've never seen anything like it before.

You have multiple seats of fire over multiple levels all at the same time and what that does is actually challenges the way you fight a fire.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The fire didn't only spread upward.

MARK CARTER, COMMANDER, METROPOLITAN FIRE BRIGADE: We did have a case here where even though the fire started on the eighth floor, burning chunks fell down below to the sixth floor and the fire ignited on the sixth and connected up with the eighth.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Incredibly - thanks to good luck and a good sprinkler system - there were only a few minor injuries.

The fire brigade says there could easily have been fatalities.

ADAM DALRYMPLE: A scenario such as Lacrosse, if it wasn't brought under control in a pretty quick amount of time, it could claim hundreds of lives.

There's no doubt about that.

We did say it was a fire that's unexpected, unprecedented, we responded really, really well, and the building occupants themselves responded really, really well.

It was a lot of things that worked well for everybody.

MARK CARTER: We were really lucky with the weather conditions on the night.

If we'd had flaming lumps of molten aluminium be pushed by the wind to adjoining apartment balconies, it would have gone up another section and that's what we've seen from looking at other fires around the world, that's pretty similar behaviour.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: So this is the panelling that we're talking about here is it? This cladding on the veranda?

MARK CARTER: Yeah, at the end of the balcony here.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The Metropolitan fire brigade launched a major investigation.

It was co-ordinated by Commander Mark Carter.

He showed us how the fire started - on an eighth-floor balcony.

A French traveller on a working holiday came home late, had a cigarette ... and thought he put it out in a plastic container.

MARK CARTER: We had outdoor furniture, we had lots of combustible items.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The fire brigade made a graphic reconstruction.

MARK CARTER: So, we had in this case a table and chairs and lots of things around it.

As we know from the fire investigation there was a plastic yoghurt container which was being used for cigarette butts.

That started a fire, onto the timber furniture.

The fire got in behind the air conditioning unit and then the panel ignited and with the ignition of the panel, we had flames shooting up the side.

So, the fire actually spread from one level to another and continued on up the building.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: This shows how the fire spread up the building from balcony to balcony.

ADAM DALRYMPLE: What's really striking about it was actually the fire progression.

It progressed up to level 21 in less than eight minutes.

Nobody in the country's really seen anything like that before, and the vertical fire spread for the particular fire was unprecedented.

In my career, I've never seen anything like it.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Cladding - made from two sheets of aluminium sandwiched around a core - ran right up the building.

MARK CARTER: Our first reaction was how the hell has this happened? How have we got a modern building that we know what the construction code says, that you shouldn't have a combustible product on the outside of a building of this type, so how has this been allowed to happen?

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The fire brigade sent a sample of the cladding to the CSIRO for testing.

MARK CARTER: We were pretty confident of the results we would get, but we were none the less surprised when the CSIRO reported back to us and said they had to cease the test because they thought they were going to damage their equipment.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The fire brigade was even more surprised to be told that the core of the cladding was made of 100% polyethylene - a highly combustible plastic.

ADAM DALRYMPLE: The report came back and said that the cladding type used on that particular building was a combustible piece of cladding, and in effect, doesn't comply with the regulations for a building of that size.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: How did it get to be there?

ADAM DALRYMPLE: That's the million-dollar question.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: So how many other buildings do you think would have similar types of cladding?

ADAM DALRYMPLE: Well I can't answer that.

I reckon it's, well it's unquantifiable.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Unquantifiable?

ADAM DALRYMPLE: Yeah.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Does that mean thousands?

ADAM DALRYMPLE: Well it might mean more than thousands.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Aluminium cladding has been spreading all over Australia for more than three decades.

Daron Hodder spent twenty years selling and installing it in Brisbane.

He says from the first time he showed it to architects, they loved it.

DARON HODDER, FORMER SUPPLIER: They liked it because typically we'd had solid aluminium in the market which was harder to fabricate, it's not as straight or as flat, the paint finish also is not as high quality as well.

That's what the composite panel delivers, it's an unmatched quality product in that regard.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Most of the cladding Daron Hodder sold was made in Japan by Mitsubishi.

In the beginning, no one questioned the fact it was made with polyethylene.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: What did you know about that at the time?

DARON HODDER: All I knew about it was that it was good for manufacturing, it was lightweight, and yes, no other issues back then.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: All through the 1990's, Daron Hodder sold tens of thousands of square metres of polyethylene cladding every year for buildings like this one in down town Brisbane.

But then around the year 2000 Mitsubishi sounded a warning - that polyethylene was flammable.

DARON HODDER: We had Hiroshi Tanaka the big boss of Mitsubishi, very respected man globally and he came out to Australia.

He had known there were some issues with polyethylene, we had no idea at the time, and he just said, "no more, no more polyethylene".

He remembers a Mitsubishi engineer telling him that polyethylene - a by-product of the petro chemical industry - was basically a fuel.

STEPHEN GEDDES: I remember some time ago, back in the 2000s, they had an older engineer that worked there who said that a building that had something like 3,000 square metres of panel on contained like three and a half thousand litres of petrol.

So, it's quite scary when you think about it.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: By then, Mitsubishi had developed a new fire resistant - or FR - cladding.

It still contained polyethylene - but much less.

FR was less combustible - but more expensive.

Geddes and Hodder both started selling it.

STEPHEN GEDDES: At the time, we were as much as $10, $11 a square metre, you know, more expensive.

So, it was a massive risk on the company's behalf to do that and we did lose sales, absolutely we did lose sales because of it.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: But there were already hundreds of thousands of square metres of PE cladding on Australian buildings.

And most of it is still there.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: So up until 2000 when your company switched over to FR cladding how much PE cladding would there have been going up in Australia?

STEPHEN GEDDES: Tens of thousands, tens of thousands of square metres, there would be, if not hundreds of thousands of square metres.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: And most of that is still there?

STEPHEN GEDDES: Yes.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Other companies continued selling PE.

Mitsubishi's biggest cladding competitor was called Alucobond- it was made in Germany with polyethylene.

Alucobond PE still graces high end developments from Sydney, to Perth.

In 2007, the new Australian supplier of Alucobond invited Daron Hodder to the manufacturer's headquarters in Germany.

Hodder was shocked to be told that although the Germans had developed a fire-resistant cladding - polyethylene cladding was still being sold in Australia.

DARON HODDER: We sat down at the boardroom table and I said to the head German engineer there, I said, 'Well, what are you using through Europe?' and he said, 'Well the Alucobond Plus Daron, and the next product up from that.

So, then I turned to the two people who had taken me there and I said to them - 'Why aren't you bringing it into Australia?', and their response was, 'we don't have to and it's cheaper to stay with polyethylene.'

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Four Corners asked the supplier of Alucobond for an interview - but they declined.

They did not recall the comment allegedly made in the meeting in Germany.

As building boomed even more PE cladding began flooding in from Asia.

It was modern and shiny, quick, and easy to build with, and most of all it was cheap.

By the late 2000s PE cladding was on the march.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: What was the state of knowledge in the market by then about polyethylene?

DARON HODDER: That it was highly flammable.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The problem was cladding had started out as just a decorative attachment, now it was being used as the main part of walls.

So did it really comply with the building code? Though everyone was using it, no one really knew.

In 2010, the ACT Fire Brigade tried to come up with an answer.

It called an industry meeting but no one was sure.

The Australian Building Codes Board couldn't say either.

STEPHEN GEDDES: There was a lot of talk about what needed to be done, what could be done, but how many people had to be involved, and the time it would take for it to go through.

So, it really just got brushed under the carpet.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Since Lacrosse, a senate committee has been looking into building products.

In July, after the Grenfell fire, the senators asked the company that sells Alucobond whether PE cladding should be banned in Australia.

KIM CARR, ALP SENATOR: The question is why should we allow it into this country? I'm old fashioned.

I think 'non-combustible' means it shouldn't catch fire and be a fire hazard.

Is that what you think it means?

WADE MARTIN, ALUCOBOND SUPPLIER: Yes.

NICK XENOPHON, NXT SENATOR: What standard is non-combustible then?

WADE MARTIN: The standard is AS 1530, part 1.

There is no such thing as a panel that passes AS 1530 part 1 as the product would be supplied.

NICK XENOPHON: What do you mean by no such thing? We have a standard but no one can comply with the standard? Can you explain that to me? So, there's a standard for non-combustible material AS 1530 part 1 but no-one actually complies with that at the moment?

WADE MARTIN: As the material would be supplied.

So, if you supplied a material, the product would not pass that test.

NICK XENOPHON: Sorry I'm being a bit slow here.

What are you saying? So there's a standard we can't comply with?

WADE MARTIN: Correct.

BRUCE RAYMENT, ALUCOBOND SUPPLIER: Correct.

NICK XENOPHON: Why can't it be complied with?

WADE MARTIN: For one, it's because the actual test itself is not intended for these types of products, for one.

NICK XENOPHON: So we have a standard that can't be complied with?

WADE MARTIN: Yes

NICK XENOPHON: It's not much of standard then is it?

WADE MARTIN: No.

NICK XENOPHON: Okay, this is doing my head in.

NICK XENOPHON: Well, it's like 'Yes Minister' now but this could end up as a coronial inquest because if there is a fire because of cladding and there are multiple lives lost, then no doubt we'll have a royal commission, no doubt we'll have coronial inquests and people will be asking - why weren't we warned about this? Well, the fact is, the warnings have been out there for years, and this inquiry is basically saying there are no excuses not to act.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Four Corners asked the CSIRO to show us the building code's test for combustibility.

Alex Webb is a CSIRO fire engineer.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: So, what have we got here Alex?

ALEX WEBB, FIRE ENGINEER: So we have three samples of the core materials from aluminium composite panels.

One hundred per cent polyethylene core.

This is what's known as an FR, with some mineral filler or fire retardant and this is a much higher proportion, with only a small proportion of polyethylene.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: And what are you going to do with them?

ALEX WEBB: This is the Australian Standard 1530 part 1 apparatus.

So this is quite a small but ferocious test.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The first sample is 100% polyethylene - the material used in the core of PE cladding.

ALEX WEBB: So, the furnace is held at 750 Celsius.

Very stable temperature.

Takes quite a while to warm up.

So, what we're looking for is any flaming that occurs, and also, we log the temperatures within the sample on the side.

And if that temperature rises more than 50 degrees, that's also one of the other criteria.

So, we have to run the test for 30 minutes, and be able to measure the temperature from the end to the highest peak as well.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The combustibility test is supposed to run for half an hour - but the PE failed in minutes.

ALEX WEBB: One sample flames more than five seconds, that's combustible.

So, that ignited very early and flamed substantially.

And we had to take the sample out as you saw.

If we leave it in too long, all the material melts to the bottom or we damage the equipment.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The fire-resistant cladding only did a little better.

ALEX WEBB: So the next one had some filler in it.

Some fire retardant, some mineral filler.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: About 70 percent, you said?

ALEX WEBB: Approximately, yes.

But that's still got 30 percent polyethylene, so it performs very similarly in this test.

Still flames, still gets a temperature rise, but does it a bit slower.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: So, technically combustible?

ALEX WEBB: Deemed as combustible.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Even the most fire-resistant cladding - with only a very small amount of PE is still combustible.

And then the final one.

Tell me about that one.

ALEX WEBB: That's still a polyethylene, but it has even more filler.

That as well would be deemed combustible, because that one still flamed.

So, this test method's really good because it is quite cheap, reasonably quick, has a high bar to pass.

So, we know the results are good, and we're going to end up with a safe product.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The problem is - it's a test of components - and it wasn't designed for products like cladding.

There are plans to introduce a much bigger full-scale wall test - like one already used in the US - next year.

But it's much harder to do and much more expensive.

ALEX WEBB: It's quite a bit different test method, but that can be used if you need to get compliance for a whole wall system which includes the cladding, the insulation, and the structure.

ADAM DALRYMPLE: There's products that come into the market that don't meet the requirements of Australian standards.

We know that and we've seen that as a result of Lacrosse.

We need to look at the way we accredit products and the way we import products.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Should they be banned from import?

ADAM DALRYMPLE: It's not about them being banned, because some of them meet appropriate applications.

You can get a piece of cladding that you can use on your own home but you can't use it on a multi-storey building.

JONATHAN BARNETT, FIRE ENGINEER: Our building code also allows the products to be used, if an engineer has done an assessment that says it's safe to use in this particular way, in this particular building.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Jonathan Barnett is a fire engineer - yet it was only after the Lacrosse fire that he checked out the cladding on his own building - where he bought off the plan four years ago.

It's PE - it stretches right up to the roof - and it will have to go.

But Barnett's not panicking.

JONATHAN BARNETT, FIRE ENGINEER: Well, I wouldn't live here if I wasn't comfortable.

I do this for a living.

I worry about fire engineering.

The building is safe to occupy.

Do we have to fix the cladding? Absolutely.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Other fire engineers are less sanguine.

TONY ENRIGHT: My personal opinion? No.

No.

I don't think there's a place for polyethylene cladding on buildings at all.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Tony Enright advised on fire safety for the new Royal Adelaide hospital - which opens this week.

Enright recommended one of the highest grades of fire resistant cladding available - and one of the most expensive.

TONY ENRIGHT: At the time we were saying do you want to wrap your hospital in plastic? And after a couple of years we changed that to, 'Do you want to wrap it in petrol?'

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Fires like this, at an apartment block in northern France, show how polyethylene cladding can enflame and fuel the fire.

This one left one resident dead.

A couple of years later combustible cladding caught fire at one of the tallest residential buildings in the world - the 86-storey - and unfortunately named Torch Tower in Dubai.

But polyethylene isn't the only dangerous product we're putting on our buildings.

Now polystyrene is springing up too.

PHIL DWYER, PRESIDENT, BUILDERS COLLECTIVE: The product we're talking about is the styrene foam used in packaging and so on.

If it burns it'll melt, it'll melt like a marshmallow.

There's a lot of it.

There's an enormous amount of it now because it's a cheap means of construction, and when it's rendered with an acrylic render over it, it looks like concrete for all intentional purposes.

Most people think they've got a concrete building.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Phil Dwyer is the President of the Builders Collective.

He showed us this polystyrene clad building in Melbourne.

Earlier this year, a fire broke out in an air conditioner on a balcony.

MARK CARTER: It was fortunate that the fire happened at a time no one was around.

No one was injured.

The damage to the building was pretty contained by the sprinkler system, but to us it was a really good example of other forms of cladding that are out there getting widely used in the industry.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: In Melbourne, the fire brigade fears that in future polystyrene could be even more of a risk than PE, because it's used a lot on low rise buildings, and they don't have to have sprinklers.

MARK CARTER: I think you've only got to go for a drive out in the suburbs and see the growth in the three to eight story building apartment sector to have some level of concern.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: This three-storey block has no sprinklers.

In March, a discarded cigarette butt set alight polystyrene cladding on the balcony.

A resident was badly burned trying to put out the fire.

The burnt balcony was eventually repaired, with new polystyrene.

MARK CARTER: There's a whole debate going on around whether it's compliant or not compliant.

The issue we want to bring to everyone's attention is it burns.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: This Melbourne building had to have fire screens added for protection.

A building this high shouldn't strictly have polystyrene cladding.

But it does.

A fire engineer and a certifier both ticked off that it was being used safely.

TONY ENRIGHT: This particular building was subject to a fire engineering analysis.

A fire engineer who said that that's Ok and a certifier has checked that an approved it.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: What do you think of it? Is it OK?

TONY ENRIGHT: Absolutely not.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: There's a view that deregulation and privatisation in the building industry have gone too far.

PHIL DWYER: We decided privatisation was the best thing in the world.

So, we privatised everything including building surveyors, and also we changed regulation, dropped red tape and so on.

And we've dropped far too much red tape.

But maybe better still, we haven't enforced the regulations that are there.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: And there's a view that cost cutting too often wins out over caution.

TONY ENRIGHT: We've got parties who are incentivised by taking risks, and then we've got other parties, who bear the consequences of those risks if they go wrong.

We have if you will a builder, a certifier and a fire engineer who are incentivised to reduce cost.

The builder because it's going straight on to their bottom line.

The certifier because they want repeat work from the builder.

The fire engineer because they want repeat work from the certifier and the builder.

And so they're all taking risks, it's the building owners who bear those risks.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: A few weeks ago, the Torch Tower in Dubai caught fire again - for the second time in two years.

Everyone was evacuated.

But it showed that where cladding is risky - something has to be done about it.

The same applies in Australia.

ADAM DALRYMPLE: I did think more might have happened and I think Lacrosse for us was unique.

Because it was a non-compliant or non-conforming product on a building it identified a bit of a regulatory failure.

So, you know, we put that on the table.

And not a lot had been done.

Since Grenfell the Victorian government has established the Victorian cladding taskforce which has a scope to look into all this particular stuff, look at the methodology of fixing buildings retrospectively and developing new legislation moving forward.

So it's taken Grenfell to give us a bit of a kickstart, which from our perspective, it's not too late but it's been a little slow, the reaction.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Nearly three years on, most of the combustible cladding is still on the Lacrosse building, with a battle raging over who should pay the $8 million needed to replace it.

It's not surprising that the question of who should pay to fix the problem here, soon got bogged down in expensive litigation.

The owners want the builder to pay, but the builder says, not my fault.

And if it is, what about the architect who designed the building, or the fire engineer who signed off on it, or the surveyor who certified it was fit to live in.

And then there's the occupier of the apartment who let too many people live in it.

And don't forget the overseas traveller who came home late after a double shift, had a cigarette, and thought he put it out in a plastic container on the balcony

NICK XENOPHON: This is an absolute legal minefield as to who is responsible.

The potential litigation, the insurance claims the finger pointing between various authorities and contractors is enormous.

ADAM DALRYMPLE: My view is that if I had bought the building myself and I was living in Lacrosse and I was faced with this, I wouldn't be very happy either.

I'd be looking for someone else to pay.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: There are also costs to the public and fire brigades.

ADAM DALRYMPLE: A building like Lacrosse, which would normally have a two-appliance response would now have six, and one of those would be an aerial appliance, a ladder platform with 26 metres reach and be able to effect rescues from balconies and all those sorts of things.

The fire itself generates a lot of heat.

The panels actually delaminate, and when they delaminate they fall off the building and you've got a whole lot of airborne parts of the building raining down.

This happened at Lacrosse, it's happened at every one of the other fires, it's happened around the world.

It's a whole new danger that fire fighters are faced with and even the occupants coming out of the building.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The fire brigade says the solution has to come at the outset.

ADAM DALRYMPLE: It's my view and I've held this view for twenty odd years in fire safety that you've gotta get it right at the front end if you're chasing your tail at the back end something's gone wrong in between.

MARK CARTER: You've got this whole chain of people involved in building design, construction, certification, supply of materials.

You can't tell me for example that if this product by all reports has been used widely in the industry for 10 to 30 years, that major suppliers of this product in Australia didn't know where this product was going to end up.

To me, I've heard that argument and I don't buy it to be honest.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Four Corners asked three major Australian cladding suppliers to identify buildings with PE cladding.

None of them did.

Suppliers say it's up to certifiers - like Robert Marinelli - to sign off on buildings.

But Marinelli says certifiers are only required to make a limited number of site visits.

And no one wants to pay them to come more often.

ROBERT MARINELLI: Well, we can't be on site all the time.

We can't be covering every part of the building, or every screw, or every component.

That expectation's too high.

So we rely on the subcontractors, the designers in the process to provide us with affirmation or certification of their products and how they're installed, because we can't be there all the time.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: And why is that a problem?

ROBERT MARINELLI: Well, you're basically leaving that accountability to the people who are installing.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: But installers - like Seamus Marnell - say that in most states no-one needs a licence to install cladding.

SEAMUS MARNELL: Anyone can do it.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: What does that mean? Is that what happens in practice?

SEAMUS MARNELL: Yeah, there's people out there that would have absolutely no idea what they're doing and they're installing it incorrectly, and they're the people we compete against every day.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Why does that happen?

SEAMUS MARNELL: Price, cost I guess.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The Senate inquiry has now been looking at problems with building products for more than two years.

SENATOR KIM CARR: What struck us on this committee, and I think I speak for all senators here, is that no one is held responsible.

Everyone has someone else to point the finger at.

The product of deregulation and self-accreditation, this process of abrogation of responsibility is that no one is responsible.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The committee's heard evidence of universal failure - confusion in the building code, a lack of enforcement and no national licensing.

STEPHEN GODDARD, LAWYER: I have more consumer protection buying a refrigerator than a $1.5million apartment.

STEPHEN GODDARD: Gentlemen, you have no option to kick this down the road another five years.

There has to be a level of accountability.

I know that in the Docklands area there are many buildings in the same position as Lacrosse.

The same is the case in Sydney and probably on the Gold Coast.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Audits are now underway across most of Australia.

But it's hard to know what will come of them.

An audit in Melbourne after Lacrosse found cladding on 170 buildings in the CBD alone.

And that didn't include office blocks.

MARK CARTER: The reality is we know we've got a lot of office and retail complexes out there that it's been widely used on I think we're just at first base really.

There's a lot of work yet to be done.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The NSW government has recently sent out more than 1,000 letters advising building owners to get fire checks on their cladding.

But the next step is unclear.

MATT KEAN, NSW MINISTER FOR INNOVATION AND BETTER REGULATION: Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

We're talking about hypotheticals.

We don't know that the cladding on buildings in this state that's been identified is unsafe.

If it is unsafe, we don't know whether or not there are appropriate systems and processes that will ensure that that cladding is safe.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The Queensland government is taking the threat of risky cladding seriously.

It's identified that Princess Alexandra hospital, built in the late nineties, is covered in combustible cladding.

It's put on extra safety measures and sent some of the cladding off for full wall testing.

Queensland is the first state to introduce legislation putting responsibility on everyone involved in construction and signing off on a building.

MICK DE BRENNI, QLD MINISTER FOR HOUSING AND PUBLIC WORKS: But what we need to do is make sure that the system that keeps everybody safe is made more robust again.

It's clear to me that the innovation in building products, like cladding on the outside of a building, has significantly undermined the strength of the building integrity system and that needs to be restored.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: We know there are millions of square metres of combustible cladding in Australia but we don't know where most of it is, or what to do about it.

It will be a big job.

And combustible cladding is just one symptom of a much more systemic failure in the whole building industry.

MARK CARTER: We've got all these sort of checks and balances that have somewhere along the line been missed.

What we've got is a legacy of a lot of buildings that you've got to question their safety going forward in the future and I think that's really unfortunate.

PHIL DWYER: We need enforcement.

You can stack all the regulations you like on top of one another.

If you don't enforce them, they're not worth anything.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: And whose job should that be?

PHIL DWYER: That should be our governments, that we pay an enormous amount of money to, to look after this for us and they have failed us completely.